


your hair was long when we first met

by straddling_the_atmosphere



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pre-Slash, Shaving, rip i made myself sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere
Summary: In which Flint shaves his head and thinks of Miranda, and thinks of Silver.set between s2 and s3





	your hair was long when we first met

His nails are red. They’re dirty, cracked with dirt and dust, and crimson too. Clumps of hair that he’s yanked out in his dreams, blood stained along the crease of them. He looks over, relieved to see Silver still sleeping on the window seat, his feverish skin pink and shiny with sweat.  _Alive._

Alive, unlike. Unlike--

He sees her face in those last moments again, incensed with rage, fierce and present in a way she hadn’t been in a long time, in a way he didn’t even realize he’d missed from her until he saw it again.

She’d looked so  _alive_ when she’d said, lips curled into a snarl, to  _burn it all down._

And then suddenly, she wasn’t. Alive, that is. A perfect hole in her perfect head, her eyes unseeing and glassy. Flint can still smell her blood as it sprayed on her face, tangy like iron. 

He closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall, cot swinging gently. He can feel his hair hanging limply along his temples, can feel the sting on his scalp that his nails left when they yanked at his hair.

He remembers her cutting it, all those years ago. Her eyes soft and sad as they’d been then more often than not, running her fingers through the damp waves of his long hair.

“I’ll miss this,” she’d said. 

“It gets in my face,” he’d replied, clenching his jaw. In truth, he’d wanted it gone, wanted the memory of Thomas playfully tugging at his ponytail to get his attention, and the ones of Thomas running his fingers through it erased from his mind. 

She’d just sighed and cut it short, snipping the ponytail off first. He watched it fall to the ground and had felt a curious thing–relief and despair, like he was losing something essential, and when Miranda had run her fingers along his scalp, ruffling the now shorter hair, he’d turned to watch her, catching the look in her eyes.

They were heavy, and when she picked up the ponytail, the strands of red spilled out of her fingers like blood. 

Flint opens his eyes, gazing out at the cabin, the moonlight casting shadows on Silver’s pale face. His breathing is even but there’s a crease between his eyebrows and the fingers of his left hand clench in pain. Flint wonders, not for the first time, how much Silver had screamed when they’d cut the leg off of him. His voice had been hoarse when Silver opened his mouth and lied to him about the gold and Flint had wondered even then, in the throes of an anger that had seeped out of him like sand in a cracked hourglass, how much Silver had screamed.

He flexes his hands and glances down at them again, skittering over the metallic red still grooved under his nails. His scalp is tender and he stares at himself in the mirror across from the cot, taking in this haggard face, the dark circles blooming under his eyes, his hair hanging stringy and unkempt in front of his face. This hair that Miranda had grown to like, had enjoyed rinsing with soap when he’d come back to her house after a long trip on the Walrus, the red in it grown brown with grease and oil. She’d enjoyed hiding braids in it that he’d find later when he pulled it out of its tie in the cabin, small plaits hidden intricately underneath the longer auburn strands. 

“I still miss the longer hair,” she’d told him once when they were in bed, her fingers running through it. “But this suits you as well.”

Flint had huffed softly and open his eyes to look at her, taking in the curve of her lips and the new lines around her eyes. She had aged a bit, without him even knowing. 

“We are both new people here, aren’t we?” he’d said and Miranda curled a strand of his hair around her finger, watching the way the setting sun made it glint gold.

“Yes,” she’d replied. “But I think there’s just enough of who we were left to still recognize each other.”

 _I see you,_ she’d said to him.  _And I see you too,_ he’d said back, that night in the captain’s cabin, a lantern lit between them, her hand between his. 

And now she is gone and there is no one around to see him.

The moonlight is bright tonight, bright enough that Flint can see everything in the cabin clearly, and he gets up, padding over to his desk to light a lantern. It casts a warm glow to the wood under his feet, and Flint glances over at Silver again, letting out a soft sigh of relief when he sees that he’s still asleep. 

First, he takes a bucket he filled with fresh water this morning and puts it near his chair. Then, he brings the mirror as well. Lastly, he takes the razor, testing the blade for sharpness, and puts it on the desk. He sits for awhile, staring at the silver sheen of the razor, at his own bare toes, then sighs, kneeling down to wet his hair, scrubbing soap all throughout his scalp. 

The sun is rising by the time he deems his hair wet enough, the collar of his shirt wet as his hair drips down it, clean for the first time in a long time. Purple and pink hues soften the cabin in their multicolored glow, and Flint swallows, staring at himself in the mirror one more time before he begins to cut. 

Strands of deep red fall into the bucket in clumps, the man Miranda knew fading before Flint’s eyes, and he clutches another chunk of hair when he hears a movement, the sound of breath hitching.

“Captain?” Silver whispers, voice raspy and dry. There’s the sound of swallowing--Silver grasping the cup of water nearby, then his voice, louder. “What are you doing?”

Flint glances at him, once, catching the way the dawn turns his dark hair a deep, vibrant purple, then looks away just as quickly, snipping the scissors.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” he says roughly. 

Silver is quiet as Flint continues to cut his hair, but when Flint puts down his scissors and picks up the razor, he can hear Silver’s intake of breath.

When he looks up Silver is staring at him, eyes open and clear for the first time since the amputation. Flint stares back at him for a moment and then looks away, and as he shaves his head, he can feel pinpricks of heat searing the slowly exposed skin of his scalp from the way Silver’s eyes linger on him. 

Watching him.  _Seeing_ him. 

* * *

_Samson went back to bed_  
_Not much hair left on his head_  
_Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed_  
_Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down_  
_Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one_  
_And history books forgot about us  
_ _And the Bible didn't mention us, not even once_

**Author's Note:**

> ive been thinking about samson as the miranda/flint song forever so. SO. bye.


End file.
